Renewable heating and cooling technologies can contribute significantly to decreasing Europe’s dependency on imported fossil fuels, stabilize energy prices and achieve climate change mitigation goals, according to a statement from the European Technology Platform on Renewable Heating and Cooling (RHC-Platform).
Speaking at the Platform’s annual conference, which took place on 22 May 2014, Paul Verhoef, Head of Unit for Renewable Energy Sources at DG-RTD, said that although politically RHC may not have found itself high on the agenda in the past, this is now changing with increased recognition of the importance of RHC within the European Commission.
At the event, the Platform presented its ‘Common Implementation Roadmap of RHC Technology’ which describes in detail the research and innovation actions needed to improve the competitiveness of RHC technologies and increase their share in the Heating and Cooling sector from 16% today to 25% by 2020. The Roadmap brings together the individual roadmaps of four technology panels: Biomass, Geothermal, Solar Thermal, and Cross-Cutting, to pinpoint the specific research and innovation actions needed by 2020.
To implement the Roadmap, the RHC-Platform is calling on the European Union as well as the Member States to increase their R&D budgets and to implement market deployment policies for RHC technology. Platform President Gerhard Stryi-Hipp said that the Platform had outlined the relevant research actions needed and the expected societal benefits in its Roadmap. Now it is requesting increased R&D spending by the EU and Member States and a stronger long-term policy for RHC market deployment, by setting ambitious goals for 2030, he said.
The main consensus reached by speakers at the conference was that Renewable Heating and Cooling offers an effective and dependable solution to increase the security of Europe’s energy supply by reducing its dependency on foreign sources in a sustainable way.
For more information:
http://www.aebiom.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Press-Release_RHC-platform_annual_event.pdf